


Winter Sorrows

by Eavenne



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Angst, Churches & Cathedrals, Feels, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sibling Love, Snow, Tearjerker, War, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 14:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17868920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eavenne/pseuds/Eavenne
Summary: Erika's brother hasn't come home from the war.And so she steps into the freezing winter, determined to find him.





	Winter Sorrows

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set loosely in Medieval Europe. It isn’t intended to be much of a historical fic, and there are probably some historical anachronisms here and there. The setting isn’t the focus here ^^ 
> 
> This is also a Human AU.
> 
> Liechtenstein = Erika Vogel  
> Switzerland = Basch Zwingli  
> Canada = Matthew  
> France = Francis Bonnefoy.
> 
> The word 'Vogel' means 'Bird'.
> 
> Enjoy!

The soldiers troop back home.

Erika watches them with the other girls and women, watches the snow swirl under the forlorn kick of the men’s worn-soled boots. Those waiting stand at the outer edge of the village – stand before the invisible chasm between the world they’ve lived in for their entire lives, and that which lies beyond. Since they heard the cry of victory two days ago the old songs have been rising from the women’s lips once more like casual greetings – they’ve been dancing in the square, laughing, telling each other about the glory of the war that they know so little of. 

Erika just gazes into the distance and waits for her brother to come home.

Slowly, like an advancing army of old greying ants, the column of soldiers approaches. The moment they cross that silent division, the moment their ghostly forms emerge from the gloom and sharpen into faces and names, chaos erupts around Erika as those left behind rush forward in a stampede to greet those who have returned. 

Wives flock to their husbands, brandishing pieces of cloth to wipe the sweat from their faces. Maidens dance between the young men, raising their heavy helms and throwing them to the ground, crowning their heads with woollen daisies for innocence. 

Some soldiers smile in a tired, apologetic way. One by one, they let their weapons fall – the swords and pikes and lances hit the ground in unison, clanging loudly against each other – and abandon the cold sting of metal for the warmth of a woman’s hand. Husbands embrace their wives and children; lovers kiss their beloved on the cheek. 

Some soldiers stand there and stare. They look through the crowds of people, look through the houses and the animals and the village and everything before them. They are staring wide-eyed at a past that has passed, at memories that will haunt them forever. Erika has heard of those soldiers. People speak of them in hushed whispers; people rarely speak of them at all. 

Some soldiers haven’t come home.

Everyone she asks uses different words but says the same thing. 

“We don’t know where he is.” 

“He’s missing.” 

“We couldn't find him.” 

And then, at last, with closed eyes and a heavy sigh –

“Your brother isn’t coming home.”

\---

She slips away on the morning of the celebrations. 

No one notices. The singing is too loud, and the wine is too sweet. Those who have lost their brothers, who have lost their husbands or their sons or their lovers, have been told that they should feel honoured. There is no nobler death, they say. You should speak of him with pride. You should swallow your tears, and think of him as a hero.

But Erika leaves, silently, without telling a soul. She hasn’t been a part of the village from the start. She doesn’t know where she’s from, doesn’t remember a thing, but she does know that she wasn’t born there and that if it hadn’t been for her brother, she wouldn’t be alive.

If he hadn’t taken her in, she would have frozen to death on that cold winter night.

He didn’t leave her for dead.

And Erika won’t give up on him, either.

\---

Winter has swept across the land.

Erika walks, bent-backed, shivering against the freezing winds. They slice through her clothes, gnaw at her bones, suck the warmth from her body – but there’s nothing she can do but to grit her teeth and walk on. Her feet sink into the snow but she keeps moving, one foot after the other, one foot after the other. 

She trips, and slices her cheek on a rock. The blood is bright red, startlingly red against the white snow – she glances at it, wipes at her cut, and moves on. Her appearance doesn’t matter anymore.

Night falls. She snaps some dry branches, collects some dead plants, and starts a fire by twisting a sharpened twig. Her hands are sore, bleeding, aching – but the fire is warm, and her calluses protect her. She digs around in her supplies, retrieves a piece of bread, and bites gingerly into it.

When she dreams, it’s of the first time she heard her brother laugh.

And when the sun peers between the clouds in the morning, she walks on.

\---

A speck wavers in the distant horizon.

It takes a day’s effort to get anywhere nearby, to see the sloped roofs of houses, to realise that it is the nearest village. Briefly, Erika’s spirits rise – she’s heading in the right direction, after all. 

As the sun sinks, its pale light melting into the cold grey sky, the winter grows crueller, bitterer. A lone, high howl pierces the frozen landscape, soon joined by another, and then another – wolves. Erika’s heartbeat pounds in her chest and roars in her ears. She gasps, struggles forward, stumbles, falls, gets to her feet, swallows, blinks away the frightened tears, and sets her eyes on her destination and looks nowhere else. She can’t die here. She won’t let herself die here. 

She hasn’t come so far to throw her life away.

Every second feels like an hour; the minutes stretch into the infinite distance, and time seems to have crawled to a halt. Erika breathes in, breathes out, takes another step, and puts one foot before the other. She walks until her legs scream and she can’t walk any longer – but she’s nearly there and she can’t stop now, she can’t stop here.

Slowly, achingly, she inches towards the village.

At the first step she takes within it, her legs give way beneath her and she crumples. People gather around her, muttering to each other, pointing, but Erika is past the point of caring. They buzz for a while, glancing at her with odd looks on their winter-flushed faces – then the crowd parts and an old wizened woman shuffles before Erika.

She’s already bent – but she bends further, moving her ancient, lined face closer to Erika’s. “Who are you?” asks the old woman. Her voice is nasally; it creaks. 

“Erika Vogel,” she says. She doesn’t share her family name with her brother – “You’re like a songbird,” he’d said once, and she’s gone by Vogel ever since. 

“What are you doing here, girl?” The old woman watches Erika intently. Her eyes, beady and shrunken with age, are bright and alert. The crowd looks at each other and murmurs. Erika sees a little girl’s small hand curl into an older boy’s, and feels her heart turn to stone.

She tries to stand, but her feet are numb and her toes are frozen to the bone; she collapses to the ground once more. “I’m looking for my brother,” she says. “He went out to fight and hasn’t come home. Have you seen him?” She knows they haven’t, knows that he can’t have passed this village, but she has to ask. “Have you?” Erika raises her head and looks at the old woman, looks at all of them, one by one, searching for a familiar face, for a familiar pair of eyes. “Have you seen my brother?” 

But silence is their only reply. 

\---

That night, she stays with the old woman.

They eat together. Afterwards, Erika sits before the fireplace, sewing, listening to the crackle of the flames as she repairs the old woman’s thin blanket. They don’t talk – there’s little to say that hasn’t already been said. But as the night sinks upon them and Erika’s needle flashes, catching the flickering firelight, a warm easiness settles between them. There’s something oddly comforting about the small house, about the silence, about the other person sitting silently in a corner. 

It reminds Erika of home.

Once, just once, the old woman speaks to her. “How old is your brother?” she asks. There’s a strength in that tattered voice, a wisdom that can only be earned through experience. Erika wonders if that was how her grandmother spoke to her, when she was newly born. She wonders if she still has a grandmother, and if that grandmother ever loved her.

“He’s nineteen years old,” she says.

The old woman laughs. It’s a brittle sound, harsh and dry, like a cough. 

“Then he’s just a child,” she says, “a child, who died gloriously on the front lines.” 

Erika’s hands still.

“I lost a son, you know.” The old woman shifts in her chair – it tips a few inches to the side, wobbling slightly. “We have lost a great deal of sons.”

“He’s not dead. I haven’t lost him.”

Silence.

“Then I hope you find him,” says the old woman.

“I hope you find him, before it’s too late.”

\---

At some point, Erika loses count of the days.

She walks, sleeps, and walks again. She passes village after village, staying the night in a few, being chased out of the rest. Some welcome her with open arms; others raise their fists at her, kicking her, slapping her till she has the sense to run.

One night Erika opens her eyes to blink at the swaying shadow of an unfamiliar man, huge, looming before her, stinking of wine, his arms outstretched to grab her. She screams but there’s no one around to hear her voice. She’s completely alone. No one’s coming to help her.

She plunges her hand into her bag, seizes her knife, and stabs blindly.

He crumples. Erika gathers her belongings in her arms and runs. She hears heavy footsteps behind her and runs faster. Hot blood pounds through her veins. She can’t breathe. She can’t think. She doesn’t know what to think. She doesn’t know what she’s done.

The sun is rising when she lets herself fall to the ground, and cry.

She wonders if she’s just killed a man.

\---

Erika tries not to think about the blood on her hands.

She tells herself that she had no choice, that if she hadn’t resisted she might have been killed. She doesn’t want to die. It’s only human to not want to die.

But she dreams of the man, and of killing him, and wakes to find her tears frozen on her cheeks. She dreams that he had a wife, that he had children, that he had people he loved, too. She dreams that it was all a misunderstanding. She dreams that he hadn’t meant to harm her. She dreams that she hadn’t killed him. It’s entirely possible. He might still be alive.

Yet it’s too late, even for regret.

She wonders if this is how her brother felt when he killed his first man.

\---

One of the next villages doesn’t throw Erika out.

But it clearly doesn’t want her there, either. Children duck behind their mothers as she passes; people stare at her, look her up and down, and wrinkle their noses in disgust. For the first time in days, Erika thinks to examine her appearance. Her cloak is tattered and falling apart in places; her dress is torn; her layers of stockings are peeling away; her boots are dotted with holes.

It only makes sense for them to avoid her.

Erika goes from door to door for a while, knocking gently, asking if she can do some chores in exchange for dinner and a bed. People crack their doors open, frown at her, and close the door without saying a word. By the time Erika finds a place to stay, night has fallen – through the windows, the small room blooms with light. 

She eats with a family of four, sitting quietly at her place, listening silently to the warm conversation. Their eldest son sent a letter recently – he’s doing fine, and the children are healthy. The mother smiles at Erika, and enlists her help with the cleaning. 

Suddenly there’s a loud banging on the doors. The mother cries out. She gathers her two young children in her arms and turns her back to the door, shielding them from danger. With long strides, the father crosses the room, making his way to the source of the noise; Erika pushes her chair back and jumps to her feet.

Then the door flies open and a long, moaning wail fills the small house. “Help, please, please...” It’s a man’s voice, swollen, gravelly, and thick with pain. “Help me, help me…” The door slams shut and the father’s figure emerges – there’s a man leaning on the father’s shoulder, his boots dragging on the floor. His eyes are wide and rolling in their sockets, and his mouth is hanging open, and his lolling tongue is jerking with every movement, and there’s a bloody hole where his right ear used to be –

“Help,” he croaks. Tears roll down his pale cheeks. His eyes are startlingly blue. Erika wonders if they used to match the colour of his bloodstained uniform.

Everyone springs into action. The soldier is carried to the bedroom, and the children are ushered to another corner of the small house. The father sits beside the man, rolls up his sleeves, and calls for bandages; Erika darts through the house, finds them, and brings them to him.

But even as they try to stop the bleeding, even as they move quickly and do anything and everything in their power to try and save the life that’s fading before them, reality slowly sinks in. It’s already too late. There’s nothing more that they can do. There’s nothing more that can be done.

Erika takes the soldier’s hand.

Her brother’s face floats before her eyes.

She calls upon the memory of an old song that she heard once, long ago. She doesn’t remember where she learned it, or who was singing it. There are no lyrics to the song – only a tune, sweet and solemn, the melody rising, rising, and finally circling back down to where it began. 

Erika takes a breath, and sings. 

His hand is trembling in hers. “Are – are you an angel?” he asks. His voice cracks on the first word. “Are you – “

Erika squeezes his hand, and sings on.

The soldier takes a shaky breath, and coughs. “Tell me – “ The words die on his lips; he gasps, stirs feebly, and tries again. “Did we...did we win?”

She doesn’t know what to say.

“Yes.” The father’s voice is gentle – its soft tone sits oddly on his stern face. “Yes, you won.”

The soldier’s laughter escapes him as a long, thin wheeze. “That’s good,” he says. His hand flexes; he grips Erika’s with a sudden surge of strength. “That’s...good.” 

Her voice wobbles as she blinks back the urge to cry.

“A – angel?” The man’s head moves slightly; he turns towards Erika. “Can I...ask you...one last thing?”

She nods. 

An odd, wistful smile twists his lips.

“If you ever – ” The soldier’s eyes glisten, and fresh tears trickle from his eyes. “If you ever meet…a little boy named Matthew, will you – ” He gasps for breath. “Will you tell him that…that his good-for-nothing father...that Francis Bonnefoy...died for his country?”

“I will.” She’s crying too. “I promise.”

“Thank...you.”

His hand goes slack a few minutes later.

That night, she lies awake and prays for her brother.

\---

Erika finally reaches her destination.

The winter wind howls in her ears, whips at her face and tears at her skin. The snow has fallen thickly on the battlefield – it’s hidden the blood and smothered the bodies. She wonders if her brother’s lying here, dead, buried, suffocating. 

She digs.

The ice burns her fingers. The freezing air pierces her lungs. She stumbles, and the snow swerves up before her face and she falls. Erika gets back up, brushing the snow from her eyes, wincing as her scar stings painfully on her cheek. 

She digs.

Slowly, she uncovers the sole of someone’s boot. Her heart races. She speeds up, thrusting her hands into the snow, not caring that her fingers have long since gone completely numb – she kicks at the ground, sending the snow flying. The hole broadens. The dead man’s torso is wrapped in a green cloak, the same cloak that her brother was wearing when he’d left. The memory is vivid before her eyes; the world spins around her. She whispers his name. The dead man doesn’t reply.

But when she finally uncovers the head, when she reaches out and places two trembling fingers on the chin and tilts it towards her –

It’s a face she’s never seen before.

Erika falls on her heels, wraps her arms around herself, and rocks backwards and forwards. She can’t breathe. She doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know what to feel. Who is this man? How did he die? Where is he from? Who did he leave behind?

The snow rains heavily from the sky, seeking to bury him once more.

She digs.

By the time the weak sunlight begins to fail, Erika’s barely moved from where she started. Her eyes burn. Every muscle in her body is screaming. It’s cold, so, so cold. She didn’t know that it’s possible to feel so cold. She wonders if she’s ever felt so cold in her life before, and can’t think of an answer. Maybe she’s been this cold once, when she was wandering the frozen landscape as a child, lost and crying. She doesn’t remember. 

Is her brother even here? Erika has no answer. No one in the world has an answer. She’s walked so far; she’s walked for so long. Is he out there? Is he waiting for her?

Or is he dead and gone, buried beneath the snow where no one will ever find him?

Erika raises her head and screams. The grey sky stares back at her, swollen and silent. She shakes. She gasps for breath. She cries her brother’s name, shouts at him to please wait for her, please be there, and please be alive. She tells him that she loves him. She tells him that she has to say it to his face. She tells him that she won’t accept anything less.

But the winter wind drowns out her voice.

\---

At long last, Erika drags herself to the nearby village.

She can barely move. She can barely think. But she has to keep going, she has to stagger forward. It’s the only thing that she can do. It’s the only thing that’s left for her to do.

There’s no other choice that she can make.

The sun set long ago; the village is cloaked in night. The blackness is impenetrable – it feels as though it can extinguish the brightest flame. She shudders, and looks around wildly. The houses are all dark now – she doesn’t see the tiniest flicker of light within. 

Erika wonders what time it is. She lost track long ago. The person she used to be, the girl who sang sweet songs and sewed embroidery, has been left behind, abandoned somewhere in the swirling winter at her back. The freezing wind has ripped the clothes from her and bared the iron beneath. She wonders who she is. She wonders if her brother will still call her a songbird, if he sees her now.

Does he even remember her name?

The houses glare at her. Erika walks through the village, looking left and right, feeling her heart sink. Everything is dark and forbidding. It’s like this place once held all the joy in the world – then it was sucked out, drop by drop, until it was bone dry and there was nothing left.

Her feet finally give way. She falls to her knees with a thud. 

Then Erika raises her head, and gazes at the building looming before her. It’s a church – an old church, she thinks, taking in the weathered, dulled marble, looking at the rusting iron gates. There’s something comforting about the structure – there’s a solemnity to it, a cool heaviness.

She struggles to her feet, and tries the gate. It swings open, groaning on its hinges. She closes it as she walks in, erasing the traces of her presence. 

Erika climbs the steps, pushes the great oaken doors open, and enters.

Inside, the church is silent and vast – she shivers against the chill. It’s larger than it seems. Erika steps between the shadowed pillars and looks ahead, gazing at the flickering flames that are dancing on distant white candles. Her footsteps echo, filling the great wide space with sound. She feels small, tiny, and insignificant. Yet there’s something soothing about the church, something calming about the atmosphere – it embraces her, and whispers that everything is going to be alright.

She pauses before the candles, watches them for a moment, and reaches out to thaw her hands.

“Child.” 

Startled, Erika whips around. An old man stands several feet to her right, framed in a low doorway, his dark robes pooling gently on the floor. A silver cross hangs loosely from a long chain on his neck. Despite his age, he stands straight-backed and tall. 

He gazes at her – something softens in his wrinkled face.

“What are you looking for, child?” he asks. His voice is deep and resonant – it booms from his throat and floods the room with sound, echoing sonorously. “What are you seeking?”

“I’m looking for my brother.” She wonders how many times she’s said those words. She wonders how many more times she will say those words, wonders how many more days will pass before she finds the slightest trace of him. Will she ever find him? Will she ever see him again? 

Will she ever be able to say goodbye?

Something shifts in the priest’s expression. His eyes widen slightly, and he takes a step closer, scrutinising Erika’s face –

Then his face smoothens and he’s impassive once more, as if he’s folded his emotions carefully away.

“I see.” He takes a few steps to the side, turns towards Erika, and holds out a veined hand towards the doorway from which he came. “Here, in the house of God, we open our doors to the sick and dying. We offer soft pillows to those whose heads are weighed down by sorrow. We offer refuge to those hiding from the rage of war.” He smiles, and the deep laugh lines at the outer edges of his eyes crinkle slightly. “Such is the way of the Lord.”

A faint hope ignites in Erika’s chest.

The priest turns, his robes swirling about his legs, and walks through the doorway. She follows. “Some days ago, I found a young man – a soldier – wandering the village, covered in blood, grievously injured.” They pass a small, snowy courtyard – a snowflake snags itself on Erika’s eyelashes, and she raises a hand to brush it away. Her heart is pounding. Her fingers are trembling. She can’t breathe.

“He was one of many.” The priest holds a door open for her and she walks in, leaving the winter behind. “But he is the only one still here, now. The others have taken leave of this world of strife – their souls have flown to the heavens, where they will live forever in paradise.”

Erika’s footsteps quicken. She hurries to the priest’s side, abandoning every notion of propriety – she can’t bring herself to trail meekly behind him when she’s so close, when she’s nearly there, when her brother is –

“He has been asking for his little sister.”

The priest comes to a halt before a plain wooden door, and steps to the side.

Erika throws it open and barrels in.

And then she’s standing by her brother’s bedside and burying her head in his chest and sobbing in his arms. “Brother,” she cries, “It’s you, I found you, I finally found you – I’ve been looking for you for so long, I’ve been walking and walking and I just knew that you were still alive and I – ” Her voice breaks; she cries and wails in his embrace, her shoulders heaving, her entire body shaking. “I’m sorry,” she gasps, not knowing what she’s apologising for. “I’m sorry.” His fingers tighten on her back – there’s something missing, there’s something wrong about the way he’s holding her.

She draws back, rubbing the tears from her eyes.

His left sleeve is lying flat where his forearm should be.

“…Erika.”

Slowly, hesitantly, she raises her head to look at her brother’s face.

Layers and layers of linen bandages have bound his eyes, hiding them from the world. “Is that – ” He coughs. It’s a dry sound. “Is that you, Erika?”

She takes his one remaining hand. “It’s me.” The tears start anew, trickling freely down her cheeks. “It’s your little sister.” Erika raises his hand to her face, and places her cheek in his palm. “I’m here.” He wipes her tears with his thumb and traces her scar with his index finger, and Erika swallows the lump in her throat. “I’m right here.”

“I can’t…see you,” he says. His voice is barely a whisper.

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.” His hand is cold. “I wasn’t – I couldn’t – ”

“It’s alright.” She leans into his touch, and lets his fingers brush against her hair. “I’m here now. Nothing else matters.”

He takes a shaky breath. “I’m useless now.” His voice is trembling. “I can’t fight anymore. I can’t work on the farm. I can’t – I can’t protect you, I…”

She bends, and presses a kiss to his cheek.

“I love you,” she says.

And though her brother’s eyes are wounded, she sees that he can still cry.

\---

Her brother’s dying.

Erika knows it, deep in her heart. She knows it before the priest thinks to mention it to her, knows that it’s a miracle that he’s still breathing. Death has been watching him from a corner, lurking in the shadows of his small room. There’s no escape.

He was doomed from the moment he lost that limb.

She can’t bring herself to ask him what happened. She can’t tell herself that he’s lucky to still be alive. When she watches him clutch at what remains of his left arm, his knuckles white, his ragged breath hissing through gritted teeth, Erika can’t make herself insist that he keep breathing. 

Sometimes he forgets what happened. Sometimes he raises his left arm to try and take her hand, not remembering that he doesn’t have a left hand anymore. Erika reminds him, gently, and takes his right hand instead.

His hand is cold, but his forehead burns. He tells her that his chest feels like it’s going to burst, and when she feels for his heartbeat his pulse is almost jumping out of his skin. Erika reaches for his severed limb to see if she can do anything, but his entire body stiffens at her touch and she doesn’t have the heart to cause him more pain. 

She doesn’t have the heart to prolong his suffering.

Erika stays awake the whole night, sitting by her brother’s bedside, refusing to move. He sleeps fitfully, tossing from nightmare to nightmare, gasping for breath and shaking under the sheets. One time he wakes up and starts speaking rapidly, telling Erika about the man who fought by his side every day, about the man who stopped him from bleeding out when his arm was sliced off, about the man he comforted and found comfort in when their hands were stained with blood and they realised they would never be the same again. They found themselves separated from the rest of the army. They wandered for days, gazing at the never-ending snow, walking around and around in the icy forest. They stumbled into a soldier from the wrong side of the war.

The man’s bloodstained lips were the last thing her brother saw before the world went black.

“I can still see him,” he says. The words tumble thickly from his mouth. “I can still see all of them. I’m still there, Erika. I haven’t left. I can’t go back. I – ”

She rests her forehead against his, and closes her eyes.

“It’s over,” she whispers.

And there’s nothing left for her to do but to hold his hand, and wait for morning.

\---

He’s slipping away.

Erika speaks to him and calls his name, but doesn’t hear a reply. She lets her head fall into her hands, and muffles her sobs. Why has she come so far just to lose him? Why is the world so unfair? Why do people go to war? What are they fighting for? 

She can’t see anything glorious about it, now.

Her brother stirs, faintly, as the sun sinks below the horizon once more. “Do you…still sing?” he asks. His voice consists of more breath than sound. 

She opens her mouth, and sings. She lets her song fill the tiny room, lets it warm him, and lets it give him what little comfort she can offer. There’s nothing else that she can do for the brother whom she loves so much – it’s already far too late. He’s already beyond saving. No one can help him, now.

Something throbs painfully in her chest.

“Let’s leave this place,” he says suddenly, interrupting the melody. There’s an undercurrent of strength in his voice now – it’s familiar, so familiar that it makes Erika’s eyes burn.

“You can’t. You have to rest.”

“There’s no time.” In one abrupt movement her brother pushes himself upright – he holds that position, swaying slightly, his arm trembling. “I – ” He gasps for breath. “I have to – ” A dry cough tears itself from his throat. “I have to go home.”

Then he’s shakily swinging his legs to the bedside and getting up. Instantly, he falls to his knees, but when Erika rushes to his side and touches his body, he gently pushes her away.

“I can do this,” he breathes. 

She watches as her brother casts his arm out blindly, groping about, searching for something to use as a handhold. His fingers brush a chair leg and he follows it upwards, rests his palm on the wooden seat, and pushes himself to his feet. For a few moments he leans heavily on it, his face flushed, his shoulders moving quickly as he tries to breathe. 

Then he tilts his head in Erika’s direction and says, “Don’t worry, I’m…I’m fine.”

She embraces him tightly, and wishes she never has to let go.

\---

They walk out of the church, hand in hand.

The priest doesn’t try to stop them. Erika feels his eyes on her, lingering on her disappearing back – she nods at him, and continues on her way.

Her brother’s hand is freezing cold. She squeezes it, tries to massage some warmth into it – his fingers tighten around hers, and she tries to etch that feeling into her memory forever. Erika pushes the iron gate open – it creaks and his head turns toward it, following the metallic sound.

She walks slowly, leading him, trying to remember the way out. Night has fallen over the village once more, smothering it in darkness – but she’s not alone anymore and she knows that she can’t collapse, not now, not when her brother’s depending on her for the first time in their lives.

And at long last, they’re out in the snow once more.

The winter wind howls in her ears and stabs at her skin. Erika feels her brother stumble behind her, and stops in her tracks – but he shakes his head, staggers forward, and weakly tells her to keep moving.

The world has blurred before her, the snow and the ice and the night sky melting into one swelling picture. She can barely see. She knows that they won’t make it back home. She knows that her brother can’t walk much longer. She knows what’s going to happen.

Erika wants to scream.

The tears stream down her face. The wind is against them now, whipping at her hair and clothes, shrieking in her ears. She ignores the piercing cold and inches forward; she takes one step, then another, gripping her brother’s hand with all of her strength. If he can still move, if he can still force his heart to keep beating even as his body is falling to pieces, she has to push on.

She refuses to give in to the winter.

Soon, they’re barely moving. Erika blinks rapidly and takes a tiny step forward, fighting the urge to turn around and tell her brother that they don’t have to go on. She knows him too well. She knows just how proud he can be. It’s where she got her own stubbornness from – where she got that foolish reluctance to give up that’s carried her so far, that made her walk on even when the winter wind was screaming at her to give up, to just go home –

His hand slips from hers.

She whirls around, trips over her feet, and falls to the ground. The snow is cold under her bare hands, wet under her knees. Erika raises her head. He lies before her, unmoving. She whispers his name. Her dying brother doesn’t reply.

Slowly, she crawls towards him. She reaches out, grips his shoulders, and tries to lift him – he falls from her grasp and hits the snow once more. She tries again, blinking her tears away and willing her hands to stop trembling.

But she only has the strength to bring his chin up to her shoulder.

They sit there for a while. Erika tries to brush the snow from his face. He wheezes beside her; his breaths rattle in his chest, quickly, shallowly. They condense in the air as puffs of white mist, float for a while, and vanish into the winter.

He swallows. She reaches out, and takes his hand.

“Are…” Erika leans closer to him, straining to hear him. “Are we…home?”

“Y– yes.” She chokes on the word.

“You know…” His voice disappears beneath the roaring wind. “I don’t think we had to…had to go back, after all.” 

His fingers tighten around hers.

“With you here, I’m…already home.”

Suddenly something shatters deep inside her.

And then she’s sobbing and screaming and pulling him against her. “Don’t go,” she cries, “Don’t go, please don’t go, I don’t want to lose you, I don’t want to – ” Her voice dies in her throat as the memory of his body, wracked with pain, floats before her eyes once more.

His hand moves out of hers.

Something cool touches her cheek.

“Don’t…cry,” says her brother, wiping the tears from Erika’s face. Heavily, his hand falls back to the snow – she reaches out and takes it, for the last time. 

He’s smiling.

She stares at the dark sky. Distantly, she remembers being saved on a freezing winter night, many years ago. She remembers being given a new chance at life – she remembers how she found a new home, how she gained an older brother. She remembers how warm their house was, how she would sew in front of the crackling fireplace, how he would sit silently in a corner and carve wood. She remembers how they would eat dinner together after a long day of work; how he would complain about this or that, how she would laugh softly at his furious protestations. She remembers the colour of his eyes. 

Once this night passes, her voice will never be able to reach him again.

“I love you,” she says.

His hand curls into hers.

“I love you too,” he whispers.

The winter wind is crying overhead.

Slowly, then all at once, her brother stops breathing.

\---

Erika buries him in the church graveyard.

She says goodbye for the last time, and starts on the long road home.

Little by little, the frost begins to thaw.

Spring is finally arriving.


End file.
